Photo Dump Kyoto / Tokyo

The last morning of my stay in Kyoto, I went to Fushimi Inari, a shrine on the outskirts of the city. The fox is considered the messenger of Inari, the god of cereal grains.


Paths climbed up the mountain, through hundreds of torii.


I did a double take when I saw this branching. It seemed slightly like an optical illusion to me.


Dragons are associated with water in the East, so many of them served as fountains. Shinto Shrines had basins in front of them for worshipers to wash hands and drink before entering.


because there are so many Shrines and temples in Kyoto, you:ll often come across Torii in the middle of city streets, with the temple several blocks away. These are usually considered the :true: entrances to the temples.


A view of Kyoto from the city park.


Kinkaku-ji temple is a major tourist attraction. It:s quite pretty, of course, but I had seen better temples grounds. Also, being so well known, it was packed. By the number of people, you could see why the temple was layered in gold...



Welcome to Kinkaku-ji. Do you want to buy something?

(Admittedly, that:s a bit unfair to pick on Kinkaku-ji... every major temple and shrine I visited had some buildings converted to gift shops/ gift shop rooms. The reason why I especially noticed this in Kinkaku-ji was because the grounds consisted of the temple, a very small park, and the shops area. I saw better temples without paying an admission price)

Tokyo

As stated in the last post, the Tokyo Museum had many impressive articles. I really think my sister would:ve liked it, because they had a special exhibit on some Buddhist works from a particular period that I can:t recall right now. Lacking the fundamental knowledge necessary to fully appreciate it, I could only see them as works of art. They were still quite nice, though. Unfortunately, photos of that area weren:t allowed.


Anyway, this is the masamune sword. Turns out the picture quality, as suspected, sucked. The sword itself is a work of art, and my favorite of the day.


Luckily, the name card came out clearly *sigh*


After leaving the museum, I found a nice surprise. The lanes of the park were packed with people admiring the cherry blossoms.


This is a picture of the areas they set aside with tarps and tables for family picnics.


It was windy, so the cherry blossoms were slowly falling off the trees. I don:t think you can tell in any of the pictures, though.


Me and some cherry trees.


After the Meiji Restoration, a group of Samurai angry at the gov:t for taking away their powers and adopting the ways of the west made their last stand at Ueno Hill. They were crushed by the gov:t forces. A few years later, the survivors petitioned the gov:t to build a memorial to the fallen. This is it.

I then went to Asakusa, another part of Tokyo. I had planned to attach myself to a tour, but, like I stated, I had just missed it. Anyway...


The street to Senso-ji was packed with people, with little shops lining the road. Ahhh. Also, the interior of the temple was so packed, that people on the outskirts of the donation area had to throw their coins in.

I then tried to look around some of the more modern parts of the city. I went into a computer / game store.


So close, and yet so so far... in the end, the language barrier was too great... (Final Fantasy 12, just released in Japan. I really want to play it, but will have to wait for the US release, which won:t happen for a few months... or half a year). Oh, something odd... Games and DVDs cost more here. around 35 dollars for a DVD, and 70 or so for games. Action Figures? Crazy high.

Oh, something cool: While wandering around Kyoto, I found a little shop with many small action figures. So... I probably have a near complete set of Final Fantasy 6 keychains now. Wheee!! And for much less than I would:ve paid on ebay.

I think I:m going to go stalk the squaresoft offices now. Tommorrow I shall venture forth to see the monkeys, the day after tommorrow I:ll go sleep at a temple on a mountaintop, and after that I:ll probably head back to Osaka for a couple of days to wrap up shopping and sightseeing in Kyoto (there were some places in both Osaka and Kyoto that I wanted to see and wasn:t able to. Also, Kyoto had the best shopping, in my opinion).